Not Thinking

The language used in What is Philosophy? is dizzying in its best moments. The text turns in its own abstract visual language and I am compelled to continue reading despite the gut feeling that I am just not getting what they mean. Particularly during D and G's discussion of the plane of immanence, I began to feel ungrounded by their explanation of philosophy. In their esteem, the plane of immanence is constructed as a kind of malleable landscape upon which concepts traverse, freely referring to nonconceptual understandings as they both exist on this plane. D and G imply that each individual has a distinct plane upon which their entire framework of being exists, each with a different set of prephilisophical intuitions that color a persons philosophical endeavors - the creation of concepts.

It is important to clarify that the actual (concept) referring to its contrary (nonconcept) is an intuitive remark. Further, the use of intuition here is not to imply a hazy gut feeling, like the one I have when I read this book, but rather intuition is thought as "the envelopment of infinite movements of thought that constantly pass through the plane of immanence" (40). Intuition, as stated, seems to fit into their definition of the prephilisophical and offers us some insight into the nonphilisophical which is "perhaps closer to the heart of philosophy itself which means that philosophy content to be understood only philosophically or conceptually but is addressed essential by nonphilosophers as well" (41). By defining philosophy as based, in part, in an intuitive grasp of the world, D and G are opening up the realm of the philosopher as something wholly distinct from other forms of inquiry. The philosopher has the unique task of following her intuitions as a kind of "groping experimentation," the layout of the plane itself resorting to "measures that are not very respectable, rational or reasonable." In this way, intuition provides justification for inquiry.

The move made away from thought as "dangerous" and "promoting  indifference" seems only true in regard to specific kind of intuitions. One ought to follow their intuitions to an extent, but when does thought take hold of one's exploratory intuitive search? D and G make the claim that one does not think without at some point "becoming something that does not think - an animal, a molecule, a particle - that comes back to thought and revives it" (42).  They seem to imply that thought moves toward intuition, making us animals as soon as we attempt to be intellectuals. This explanation goes further to say that thought is loses its indifference when one is aware of the danger, requiring a kind of self-awareness to be ever-present in thought in order to not lose ourselves in our processes, indifferent to a world that is intuitively provocative that can capture us at infinite speed. This image of the philosopher is a dynamic one, allowing for the aimless curiosity that goes unexplored if we confine ourselves to the pursuit of knowledge.